Right after the big news of Microsoft acquiring Activision Blizzard, next comes the news of PlayStation buying Bungie Games. The gaming community seems split on their reaction towards this. Some fans are celebrating this was a big win from Sony in reaction to the Microsoft Scitvion Blizzard deal. But there are players who don’t care about Destiny 2, and not sure how Bungie will play a major role in PlayStion’s roadmap. For Xbox fans wondering who owns Halo rights as Sony buys Bungie games, and what happens to it, we will talk about all of them here.
Who Owns Rights to Halo After Sony Buys Bungie Games?
Microsoft owns the exclusive intellectual property rights to the entire Halo franchise even after Sony buys Bungie Games. Halo belongs to Microsoft as they bought Bungie Studios back in 2001. And even though Bungie became an independent company in 2007, the right to Halo still belongs to Microsoft and thus Xbox. Bungie was taken over by Microsoft to create Halo as their own FPS on their first Xbox. This turned out well as Halo become the console-defining killer app of that console generation.
And for players wondering if this deal is due to recent acquisitions by Microsoft Bungie, then no. These deals take months to work out. So this was happening behind the scenes for many months till the acquisition was made public. Here’s a tweet from Christopher Dring, the man behind gamesindustry.biz:
The deal was in the works for the past 5/6 months. Its not a reaction to the Take-Two/Zynga or Microsoft/Activision deals.
— Christopher Dring (@Chris_Dring) January 31, 2022
And according to this tweet, this acquisition will help Sony further expand its foothold on the movie market. And as we know, Bungie is working on expanding Destiny over other media other than video games. The Uncharted film is coming out on February 18, Ghost of Tsushima film is currently in the production stage, and The Last of Us TV series will be coming out on HBO Max soon. So it all makes sense that Sony is making their film distribution company “Sony Pictures Releasing” stronger with the Destiny franchise.
Will Destiny Become Sony Exclusive?
According to SIE President & CEO, Jim Ryan, “…Bungie will remain an independent and multi-platform studio and publisher” as per PlayStation Blog. So current Destiny players have nothing to worry about. There’s no exclusivity in terms of upcoming DLCs or game support as of now. Keeping in mind Microsoft didn’t make Minecraft exclusive to Xbox, after the acquisition of Mojang Studios, we hope this stays the same for Destiny 2.
But there are rumors of Bungie’s new IP hitting the market by 2025. We can guess this will be a PS4 & PS5 exclusive, just like how Starfield from Bethesda Game Studios will be exclusive to Xbox and PC. Only time will answer this for us.
That’s all about who owns Halo rights as Sony buys Bungie games. While you are here, make sure to take a look at our Video Game Guides, where we have covered all the major queries from the latest popular games.
